Darrell Jordan-Smith, VP World Wide Sales, ICT, Red Hat

Darrell Jordan-Smith is of the opinion that the deployment of NFV in real-world commercial commercial networks has been stalled because the development of APIs and standards has taken a back-seat to open source. He says the "swerve" into open source has undoubtedly driven-in innovation and taught the industry lessons around various use-cases that are now accelerating proofs of concept towards production. On the 5G front he believes the technology will enable a whole new set of business-to-business apps and services in various vertical sectors such as healthcare, transportation, oil and gas, etc. Such sectors will gain big economic benefits from 5G and they, in turn, in due course and in one form or another, will knock-on into the consumer sector.